Abby and Win’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Anong Balita’ Category

My cousin Ronald and I had a bet on the 2010 NBA Finals. The loser buys the winner a swingman jersey, wear it while making a video and read off a speech prepared by the winner. I lost but he didn’t want to write a speech is I had to make up what I had to say.

Enjoy the video. I know a lot of old friends who are Laker fans will.

I stood in line in front of Best Buy to try and get myself and Abby an iPad. I had already planned on getting the 32GB model while she gets the 16GB. Why didn’t I pre-order it or go to Apple you ask? Because of Best Buy’s reward zone points plus Best Buy has no interest for 18 months, that’s why. There were about 20 people in line right before they opened. The manager came out and said that they normally handed out tickets but for the amount of people in line, they will have plenty – plus another truck arrived minutes before with more. So much for worrying about getting one but I was excited to get ours so I didn’t mind standing in line for 30 minutes. I was in 4th and the guy in front said he has been there for 3 hours haha.

Anyway, we got our iPads and it’s better than I thought it would be. First off, I have a 13″ Macbook Pro, a Compaq Mini netbook, a HTC MyTouch 3G phone – so why would I want or need an iPad? What can I do with it that I can’t already do now with my portable devices? And finally, many have made fun of the iPad asking “What is it for?”. Well here is how I look at an iPad device and how I would use it.

• Instant start up. The iPad powers on with a touch of a button and is useable right away. No waiting for boot up. I do leave my Macbook Pro on and sleeping most of the time but the battery drains – slowly but surely.
• Size. It is the right size for what it can do. It’s smaller than my laptop and netbook (weight) and it can do the common things like surf on the internet, check emails, read files, and some word processing – I say some because of the virtual keyboard, it can get tiring typing on it. You can however use a bluetooth keyboard if you don’t mind carrying another item. It is larger than my phone but my browsing experience is better on the iPad because it’s larger.
• iPhone OS. I just love the iPhone OS. I had the first gen iPod touch and iPhone 3G and I missed the user experience after I got rid of them. The functionality and ease of use, no one has been able to match – although Google Android is getting there. But I’m a Mac user and I guess I expect to have a similar experience on other devices other than my computers.
• Apps and games. Similar to the iPhone OS experience, there aren’t many apps or games you can use/play on mobile devices that give the same experience as they do in the iPhone OS.
• Ebook reader. This is one that I didn’t care too much for but I’m glad it’s there. There are other ebook readers out there like the Amazon’s Kindle that do a good job. But the iPad not only can do what other ebook readers can do, it can do more , it can be more.
• Portable video player. It is an excellent portable video player. You can play videos purchased from iTunes, videos encoded with Handbrake or other software, portable formats that come free when you buy the Blu-ray or DVD version, online videos from apps created by ABC network, Netflix (subscription fee), Youtube, etc. And I’m betting more to come, it’s just a great platform for developers to develop on.
• Battery life. It last longer than my other portable devices even when watching video.

There’s so many things you can do with the iPad even if you already have other portable devices. Many compare it to the iPhone and iPod touch – but just a bigger version. It’s more than that. Yes it’s bigger so your internet surfing experience is better – close to being on a computer… still no Flash support. With HTML5 standards coming soon, this shouldn’t be a problem in the future. Also, the iPad comes with a more powerful processor. Typing on it is a lot more smoother than my iPhone 3G. Apps and games load quicker and more responsive.

I definitely recommend getting one.

Hi everyone, it has been a while since I last blogged.
It’s just a month to go then I will be completing my internship hours. I know that after passing the FPGEE and TOEFL this is another obstacle since the recession made it difficult for foreign grads to find internship position in the location most accessible to them.
It has been a great experience overall since the practice of pharmacy in Philippines is totally different. Pharmacist here are called “doc,dr” and they do deserve it, they know not just the drug but they can even diagnose which I did not know how after graduating from a pharm school. Maybe I do but not as in depth from what they studied here but it can be learned through books, reading and experience. It is a plus factor being a doctor of medicine of course but I know if I did not pursue graduate school it is not impossible to pass FPGEE but it will just take more effort and patience.
Anyways, I worked with clerk and technician in an independent pharmacy and mostly we handle derma prescription since we are next to dermatologist. It is not as busy as the big chain so I was able to learn everybody’s task, which is good so that if you don’t have the tech or clerks you still know how to manage on your own. It is a whole new experience for me answering a call, dealing with the customers, greeting everyone “Hi , How are you, How may I help you, Thank you and Have a good day”……. we did not have these in Philippines. I do not remember going to pharmacy being greeted like this well hindi lang siguro ako sanay since when I got here I have to get accustomed to that not just in pharmacy but in any establishment here. Being able to compound some RX is nice too since not a lot does that. What I had difficulty with at the beginning is running the computer, there are commands that you have to know so you can transmit to the insurance. Wala din insurance sa Phi to transmit the prescription bills, mostly its cash in Phi. Well in the end I guess in any field thats why there is such a thing called internship is for us to get used to the ways and system so that it will be easier to troubleshoot and work when we become full-pledge professionals.
I know everybody has different experiences, good or bad share it here so that others can learn from it and expect these things to come.

I recently jailbroke my iPhone 3G running OS 3.1.2. Then I installed MyWi to check out the tethering capabilities for the iPhone. With this app you can tether using USB, bluetooth and wifi.

Here is the speed test results.

The latency is pretty high but the connection seems consistent. I used to run a Verizon V740 internet card and was getting higher speeds – close to 2x faster download. I’m also getting a full signal on AT&T 3G – surprisingly.

Anyways, my Verizon contract is up and I terminated the service. I hardly found use for it. With MyWi, $10 seems like a good deal. Hopefully, AT&T doesn’t pull a “switch” to somehow disable this app.

I’ve been getting the [an error occurred while processing this directive] error every time I go to my website. I googled it and found this http://wordpress.org/support/topic/204631?replies=4. People suggested it was caused by the WP Super Cache plugin. I’m currently running 0.9.7. Well, how could you get to the plugins interface if every page displayed that error?

I ended up using phpMyAdmin that my host has and went in the database to manually disable the plugin. Luckily the tables and data entry values were specific so it wasn’t hard to figure out where to start looking. The table you want to look for is “wpau_active_plugins_info”. This table should have records of plugins that are active – hence the table name. Inside this table, look in “plugin_name” column. This is where I found the WP Super Cache entry. I deleted it and reload the page. It fixed the problem.